17 Bible Verses About Infidelity

Exodus 20:14

“You shall not commit adultery.”

Reflection: God speaks the command at Sinai as one of the Ten Commandments, in the same list as the commands against murder and theft. Three verses later the list forbids coveting “your neighbor’s wife”, so the commandments address the desire as well as the act.

Leviticus 20:10

“If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”

Reflection: The law names both the man and the woman and gives the same penalty to each: “both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” The offence is defined by the woman’s marriage: the man commits adultery “with the wife of his neighbor.”

Malachi 2:14-15

“…the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?”

Reflection: Malachi is answering men of Judah who weep at the altar because God no longer accepts their offerings (Malachi 2:13). The reason given is that they have been “faithless” to “the wife of your youth”, a marriage the Lord witnessed and calls a covenant. The next verse ties that faithlessness to divorce, and the charge “So guard yourselves in your spirit” appears in both verse 15 and verse 16.

Hebrews 13:4

“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

Reflection: The verse comes in a list of closing instructions for a church, between remembering those in prison and staying free from the love of money. It asks that marriage be honoured “among all”, so the whole church is addressed, married or not, and it names adulterers separately from the sexually immoral as people God will judge.

Job 31:9-11

“If my heart has been enticed toward a woman, and I have lain in wait at my neighbor’s door, then let my wife grind for another, and let others bow down on her. For that would be a heinous crime; that would be an iniquity to be punished by the judges.”

Reflection: In his final defence Job lists sins he has not committed and calls down a curse on himself if he has. For adultery the curse falls on his own marriage, “let my wife grind for another”, and he calls the act a crime for the judges. Earlier in the chapter he says, “I have made a covenant with my eyes” (Job 31:1).

Proverbs 2:18-19

“For her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed; none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life.”

Reflection: The woman in view is described two verses earlier as one “who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God” (Proverbs 2:17). Her house leads to death, and the wisdom the father teaches is what delivers a son from her (Proverbs 2:16).

Proverbs 5:3-5

“For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol.”

Reflection: A father warns his son that the forbidden woman’s words taste like honey and end like wormwood. The chapter then gives the alternative in the language of water: “Drink water from your own cistern” and “rejoice in the wife of your youth” (Proverbs 5:15, 18). Near the end the father reminds the son that “a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord” (Proverbs 5:21).

Proverbs 6:32

“He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself.”

Reflection: The surrounding verses compare adultery with carrying fire against the chest (Proverbs 6:27) and with theft. A thief who is caught can repay sevenfold, but a wronged husband “will accept no compensation” (Proverbs 6:35). The man who commits adultery, verse 33 says, gets wounds and a disgrace that “will not be wiped away.”

Genesis 39:9

“He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”

Reflection: Joseph, a slave in charge of his master’s household, answers his master’s wife when she says, “Lie with me.” He refuses on two grounds: his master has trusted him with everything except her, and the act would be “sin against God.” She kept asking “day after day”, and when she caught hold of him he left his garment in her hand and ran from the house (Genesis 39:10-12).

2 Samuel 11:2-4

“It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, ‘Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’ So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her.”

Reflection: The chapter opens in the season when kings go out to battle, with David staying behind in Jerusalem. He is told plainly that the woman is “the wife of Uriah the Hittite” and sends for her anyway. When she becomes pregnant, David arranges Uriah’s death, and the prophet Nathan later charges him with both: “You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife” (2 Samuel 12:9).

Psalm 51:10, 12

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me… Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.”

Reflection: The psalm’s heading places it after Nathan confronted David over Bathsheba. David asks for a clean heart, a right spirit, and the joy of salvation restored, and he says to God, “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4). In 2 Samuel 12:13 Nathan answers his confession with “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.”

Matthew 5:27-28

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Reflection: In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus quotes the commandment and carries it back to the look “with lustful intent.” He goes on to speak of tearing out an eye and cutting off a hand rather than going into hell (Matthew 5:29-30), and then turns straight to divorce (Matthew 5:31-32).

Matthew 19:9

“And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Reflection: Pharisees ask whether a man may divorce his wife “for any cause” (Matthew 19:3). Jesus answers from Genesis, “the two shall become one flesh”, says Moses allowed divorce “because of your hardness of heart”, and makes sexual immorality the exception. Mark’s account of the same teaching has no exception and applies the rule to a wife who divorces her husband as well (Mark 10:11-12).

John 8:10-11

“Jesus stood up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.’”

Reflection: Scribes and Pharisees bring a woman “caught in the act of adultery” and remind Jesus that Moses commanded stoning; no man is brought, though Leviticus 20:10 names both. After Jesus says, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her”, the accusers leave one by one. He neither condemns her nor excuses the act, and sends her away to “sin no more.” The ESV prints John 7:53-8:11 in brackets with the note that the earliest manuscripts do not include it.

1 Corinthians 6:18

“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”

Reflection: Paul asks the Corinthians whether they will take the members of Christ and make them “members of a prostitute” (1 Corinthians 6:15). He quotes Genesis, “The two will become one flesh” (1 Corinthians 6:16), to show that sexual union binds the body, and goes on to call the body “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). His instruction is to flee sexual immorality.

Hosea 2:19-20

“And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD.”

Reflection: God speaks of Israel as a wife who has gone after other lovers, the Baals (Hosea 2:17), and promises to take her back and betroth her again “in faithfulness.” In the next chapter the prophet acts it out: God tells Hosea to love “a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel” (Hosea 3:1).

James 4:4

“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

Reflection: James calls his readers “adulterous people” for seeking friendship with the world, using the prophets’ picture of God’s people as an unfaithful wife. The following verse speaks of God who “yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us” (James 4:5).